IT WAS a master stroke to set The Flying Dutchman in a north-east fishing village, and not just because Wagner had originally intended his supernatural thriller to have a Scottish backdrop.

The contrast between the claustrophobia of a remote, plain-bread coastal community and the turbulent North Sea particularly lends itself to this epic tale, which reflects the composer’s lifelong obsession with redemption.

Scottish Opera has updated this new production to the black oil boom time of the 1970s, with a set reminiscent of Lars Von Trier’s film Breaking the Waves, which shares similar themes and an almost identical time and place, right down to a chunky sea captain in a sheepskin coat.

The captain invites the haunted Dutchman back to the village hall for a couthy party.

It is here that the Dutchman, who is cursed to forever sail the seven seas until he finds the love of a faithful woman, meets the captain’s obsessive and tormented daughter Senta, who believes she is destined to be the doomed sailor’s salvation.

Baritone Peteris Eglitis spent a year preparing for his role as the Dutchman, and proves that Wagnerian roles do not have to take on Brian Blessed-sized proportions, particularly in his interactions with Senta, sung with sweet soaring strength by soprano Rachel Nicholls.

As the couple’s mystical union brings this unsettling drama to its eerie conclusion, it is clear that Scottish Opera has created a magical dark pearl in the bicentenary of the composer’s birth.